Sanity Falls
by BayesWatch
Summary: Rational fic wherein Dipper Pines is intent on exploiting the wonders of Gravity Falls.
1. Irrational Truth

Mr. and Mrs. Pines lived in the prosperous suburbs of Piedmont, California. Mr. Pines was a lighting technician for major Hollywood films, though he seldom watched them. Mrs. Pines was a mid-level marketing administrator for a major supermarket. Between the two of them they had two children, fraternal twins called Dipper and Mabel. Mr. and Mrs. Pines were not particularly attentive parents, and so this story does not concern them.

Dipper Pines – so nicknamed for the perfect Big Dipper formed by birthmarks on his forehead – was a small boy, who never felt like he had many friends. He always found himself ahead of his classmates academically, and, worse still, found himself ahead of the curriculum intellectually. At age eight he gave up on school as a source of education altogether, only putting in the minimal effort to keep the adults around him satisfied. He instead turned to online sources, and taught himself how to critically and analytically think. By age twelve, Dipper considered himself one of humanity's greatest minds, and despised the way people rolled their eyes when he informed them of such. The actual given name of Dipper Pines is a topic that will merit discussion at a later date.

Mabel Pines never had such trouble finding a place socially. Her relentless, confident positivity made it easy for her to connect with people just about anywhere. It was difficult not to feel better after meeting Mabel. It took genuine effort to dislike her. Mabel's favorite non-Mabel person in the world was certainly her brother Dipper, and she considered herself lucky to have been born alongside him. Dipper always had some interesting topic to discuss, whether it was basic epistemology or some fringe issue from the deepest reaches of theoretical physics. Even when Mabel didn't understand what interested Dipper, she still appreciated his enthusiasm. Dipper and Mabel had extreme confidence, of slightly different sorts.

On the occasion of Mabel and Dipper's graduation from the sixth grade, their parents, in an effort to spend some time alone, sent them off to live for three months with their great uncle Stanford Pines, who lived in the small, rural town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Stanford had once shown great promise as a cutting-edge scientist, but burned out after high school, and ultimately retreated to a simpler life operating a small business for a modest income. He fell out of touch with his family, but wished to change this, and was ecstatic when offered the opportunity to spend some time with his younger brother's grandchildren.

Allow me to take a moment to explicate the history of Gravity Falls. According to guidebooks, Gravity Falls was founded in 1855 by bank teller Nathaniel Northwest, when he purchased the land from a local Indian tribe. Over time the town grew thanks to its placement near a key mudflap factory, which particularly proved profitable after the invention of the automobile. Now the town is mostly notable for having the lowest crime rate per capita in the United States, and for being a critical recruitment center for '90s-style boy bands. Absolutely none of this is true.

* * *

Dipper ate the last chip in his bag and stepped off of the train, Mabel right behind him. Dipper quickly stuck the emptied Doritos bag in a nearby trashcan-with-attached-ashtray, and looked around the station as Mabel blew and then popped a pink bubblegum bubble. He spotted a rotund young man with a smile plastered on his face, a question mark printed on his shirt, and a sign reading "MABEL AND DOPPER, WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS!"

"Hey, Mabel," said Dipper, nudging her and pointing at the man. "Unless there's someone out there who's actually named Dopper, I think that that's a mistake."

"Hi!" shouted Mabel, and she waved. Everyone stared, but the man with the sign realized he was being addressed, and his smile intensified!

"Yo!" said the man. "Mabel? Dopper?"

"I'm Dipper," said Dipper. "Dipper Pines."

"Oh," said the man. "That makes more sense." He took a pen out of his pocket and crossed out the O on the sign. Dipper wondered why he bothered. "I'm Soos. I work for your Grunkle Stan. He was busy so he sent me to pick you dudes up."

"Grunkle?" said Dipper, raising a confused eyebrow.

"Yeah, Grunkle," said Soos. "Great, uncle. Grunkle."

"Wow, Soos, I love your portmanteaus," said Mabel.

"Oh, heh heh, thanks," said Soos, and he blushed. Then he whispered: "Hey, Dipper, what's a portmanteau?"

"Two words combined to form another word," said Dipper, who then pouted. Soos was clearly not the brightest bulb in the reject pile, and Dipper just wanted to meet his brilliant scientist great uncle already.

"To Grunkle Stan's house!" proclaimed Mabel, and shortly thereafter the three of them were in Soos's pickup truck, though he insisted on driving it very slowly. He claimed Stan would be upset with him if he drove faster.

"So, what star signs are you dudes?" said Soos, though he was careful to keep his eyes on the road. "I'm guessing Dipper's a Capricorn and Mabel is a Sagittarius."

"We're twins, Soos," said Dipper, and he rolled his eyes.

"Oh, so one of you's a Gemini, then," said Soos. "I was way off."

"We're Virgos," said Mabel, although Dipper knew she was too smart to care except for the sake of conversation. "What are you?"

"I'm a Cancer!" said Soos.

 _As is anyone who believes in astrology,_ thought Dipper.

"Hey Soos, do you want to learn the scientific method?" said Dipper.

"Do I ever!" said Soos. "Then I could build a giant robot, and then people would really think I'm cool."

"The scientific method isn't about building giant robots," said Dipper.

"Is that just in movies?" said Soos.

"It's about systematically trying to figure out how reality works," said Dipper. "Let's play a game. I'm going to write a rule down on this slip of paper, and then I'm going to hand it to Mabel."

"I've played this game before," said Mabel. "It's not very fun."

"Shh, Mabel, don't spoil the solution," said Dipper, and he handed her the note. "Anyway, I'm going to follow that rule, and you're going to give me sets of three numbers, and I'm going to say 'yes' or 'no' to each set. Yes if it follows the rule, no if it doesn't."

"This sounds kinda complicated..." said Soos. "Um, two four six?"

"Yes," said Dipper.

"Two six four?" said Soos.

"No," said Dipper.

"Okay, I'm gonna guess the rule now," said Soos. "The three numbers have to be two, four, and six. In that order." Dipper pulled on his face out of frustration.

"No," said Dipper. "That's not the rule at all. Not even a little bit. You had no reason to think that. You literally only found two data points and then made a theory to fit them. The scientific method says that to be sure of something, you need to come up with a theory, and then rigorously test it with experiments that could disprove it. Come up with alternate explanations of the data and then rigorously distinguish between them. Mabel, read off the real rule."

"'Any three real numbers from least to greatest'," said Mabel, a shrug in her voice.

"Oh, geez, I was way off," said Soos. "I should have said more numbers."

"Okay, now I'm going to write down a rule," said Mabel. "And I'm going to hand it to Soos, and Dipper can choose numbers."

"Good," said Dipper. "A counterexample to demonstrate how the scientific method is done. Zero, one, two?"

"No," said Mabel.

"One, two, three," said Dipper.

"Yes," said Mabel.

"Negative one, negative two, negative three," said Dipper.

"No," said Mabel.

"Hmm," said Dipper. "One, two, five."

"Yes," said Mabel.

"Seven, three, nine thousand and fifty," said Dipper.

"Yes," said Mabel.

"Five googolplex, thirty, one," said Dipper.

"A googolplex is ten to the ten to the hundred, right?" said Mabel.

"Right," said Dipper, though he found it exasperating that even his own sister didn't know that simple fact.

"Yes," said Mabel.

"Five googolplex, thirty, negative one," said Dipper.

"No," said Mabel.

"Five googolplex, thirty, zero," said Dipper.

"No," said Mabel, and she grinned. Dipper wasn't sure why, so it made him uncomfortable.

"Five googolplex, thirty, i," said Dipper.

"That's not a real number, silly," said Mabel. "No."

"Normally I'd like to get more rigorous, but I think this is enough for this activity," said Dipper. "Any three positive real numbers?"

"Read it, Soos!" said Mabel.

"'Any three numbers Mabel feels like saying yes to'," said Soos. "I like this rule. It's simple."

"What?" said Dipper, shocked by the betrayal. "Mabel! You missed the point of this whole exercise!" Mabel just laughed. "I wasn't trying to trick Soos!"

"But I was trying to trick you," said Mabel. "And I got you pretty good." Dipper crossed his arms. Mabel didn't even care about teaching people to think.

"Ooh, I came up with a rule!" said Soos. "Can I write it down and hand it to Dipper and have Mabel guess it? Then the game will be balanced. Om."

"That sounds delightful, delicious, and de-lovely, Soos!" said Mabel. "Write it down!" Soos pulled over and scribbled something down, and handed it to Dipper.

"Okay, you can start guessing," said Soos, and he resumed driving.

"One two three," said Mabel.

"Yes," said Soos, and he happily nodded.

"One two four," said Mabel.

"No," said Soos, sternly shaking his head.

"Negative one negative two negative three," said Mabel.

"Yes," said Soos.

"Two four six," said Mabel.

"Yes," said Soos.

"Two six four," said Mabel.

"Heh, you got 'em in the wrong order, dude," said Soos. Dipper wanted to roll his eyes into his head.

"Three six nine?" said Mabel.

"Yes," said Soos.

"Zero zero zero?" said Mabel, enthusiasm rising.

"Technically yes," said Soos.

"Any three numbers of the form x, 2x, 3x!" said Mabel.

"That's pretty close," said Soos. "Dipper, could you read what I wrote?"

"'Any three numbers such that the second one is two times the first one and the third one is three times the first one, except for ten thousand, one hundred and one, twenty thousand, two hundred and two, and thirty thousand, three hundred and three'," said Dipper. "Soos, that's a stupid rule."

"Wow, what a great rule, Soos!" said Mabel.

"Aw, thanks," said Soos.

"There's no way anyone would ever guess that your otherwise-consistent rule had a single exception," said Dipper. "That's not how reality works. I'm twelve years old and I know this. You have no excuse."

"Aw, geez, if you say so, man," said Soos, more offended than he let on.

 _What an utter waste of space,_ thought Dipper. _It's like trying to teach a dog how to read. I can't wait to meet my genius relative instead of talking to this minimum-wage grunt who talks about horoscopes._ And so he shut up and just let Mabel and Soos sing the entire Frozen soundtrack until they all finally arrived at their destination.

"Is this Grunkle Stan's house?" said Mabel. The building was quite large, and had a character of its own: it was two stories and oddly shaped, like it was once two distinct buildings, each triangular prisms with different orientations that had been awkwardly jammed together; the whole thing was made of lumber with some logs for accents. It had a large sign on each face, which proclaimed "MYSTERY SHACK", and a smaller sign on one side reading "GIFT SHOP". There was a totem pole nearby, with a conspicuous loudspeaker attached to it.

"Yep!" said Soos. "And also my workplace." Soos invited the children in through the gift shop, and they were immediately greeted by a tall, thin teenage girl in a plaid shirt. Dipper looked at her long, flowing red hair, and into her green eyes, and was struck by her beauty.

"Yo, Soos!" said the girl.

"Hey, Wendy!" said Soos.

"Are these Dipper and Mabel?" said Wendy.

"Yes," said Soos.

"Are we related to you?" said Dipper.

"Neah, I just work here," said Wendy. "Like Soos. Stan is still busy with whatever he's doing probably some errand for the Shack. He's really looking forward to meeting both of you, though. Come in!" Dipper and Mabel stepped forward and discovered a truly tacky gift shop full of cheap merchandise sold at high prices. T-shirts with three moons howling up at a giant wolf head. Little plush monsters. Empty snowglobes advertised as containing ghosts.

"Wow, do people buy this stuff?" said Dipper.

"Well, not today," said Wendy. "Business is really slow so far."

"What's this I hear about business being slow?" said a gravelly voice coming from deeper in the shack. It belonged to an older man in a suit, with a five o'clock shadow and a fez.

"Stan!" said Wendy. "I thought you were out!"

"I was until a few minutes ago," said Stan. "Sheesh. Kids!" Stan stretched out his arms and Mabel ran into them, followed by Dipper.

"Grunkle Stan!" said Mabel.

"And for your information, Dipper, yes, people do buy this stuff," said Stan. "And tours. They buy tours at hilariously exorbitant prices. This has been a profitable business. At points in time. We used to have a roller coaster out back but we had to sell it for scrap because it didn't 'follow' 'safety' 'regulations'. That hit our income pretty hard, but we've still had good years since then. Our Fiji mermaid is a top draw. The kids love it, the adults speculate about how it confirms the Aquatic Ape Theory or whatever other nonsense they can come up with." He gestured back into the hall, at what was obviously half of a monkey sewed to half of a fish.

"Sure are a lot of idiots out there," said Dipper.

"And thank the Lord above for that," said Stan.

"So when did you decide to profit off of the low sanity waterline instead of trying to raise it?" said Dipper.

"What?" said Stan. "You're going to have to slow down, kid."

"Why do you scalp idiots instead of educating them?" said Dipper. Stan shrugged.

"Because I want to make money?" said Stan. "Oh, and speaking of money, I just got two unpaid laborers who can help out around the Shack."

"Who are they?" said Mabel, with exaggerated curiosity.

"Their names are Dipper and Mabel Pines," said Stan, and he immediately handed Mabel a dustpan and Dipper a mop.

* * *

A week into the endeavor, and though Mabel was as happy as she ever was, Dipper was increasingly miserable. The brilliant mind he'd expected to find in his great uncle was simply gone; at best Stan was merely cynical. The rest of the town was a perfect image of the premodern, prescientific world, a world that no longer had any reason to exist. Soos's belief in starbound destinies was just the beginning. The most profitable operation in town was a child psychic named Gideon Gleeful, who had no trouble finding true believers; his Tent Of Telepathy was practically a church. The local news media also made stunning amounts of money reporting on utter fluff stories; just about anything that happened in Gravity Falls wound up in the paper because they had nothing more interesting to think about. The town's residents were all empty upstairs, with no idea of life outside their little routines, nor much genuine desire to learn. Soos had been a representative sample! This was no better than California.

"I guess I expected that life out here would be more tranquil than it was at home," said Dipper. "And that's not really true. And I expected that the people would be more interesting, and that's not really true either – except for you."

"Thanks?" said Wendy. They were eating sandwiches on the porch. Mabel had made them, but she was already gone; she was pinning pamphlets up around town.

"And the smartest person I know here is Grunkle Stan, and what conclusion did he come to?" said Dipper. "Eke out a humble living taking advantage of people's irrationality. And even he's not optimizing for it, since the Gleefuls are apparently doing the same thing more effectively. It's just, it's just depressing how stupid people are, Wendy. Why can't everyone learn to be sane?"

"Can I offer you some free advice?" said Wendy.

"Yes?" said Dipper.

"Talk – less," said Wendy. "Smile more."

"Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for," muttered Dipper, as Wendy said the same thing. Of _course_ Wendy had listened to the Hamilton recording.

"Ah - I see you've heard it," said Wendy. "That's at least a start. But you'd be wise to take it to heart." Dipper just stared at Wendy in awe until she stood up; he then followed suit. "Alright, Stan is going to yell at me if I extend our break time any more, so go get some wood. I'll be back at the counter." Wendy handed Dipper her axe. It was so heavy in his arms, and he was stunned by the ease with which she'd carried it.

"Alright, I guess I'm going to, going to go do that," said Dipper. "Get wood. With this axe. Going." Wendy chuckled.

"Bye!" said Wendy, and soon Dipper was gone.

Dipper walked off of the Mystery Shack's property in search of a nice recently fallen tree. Stan wanted to build a new deck behind the Shack; a normal person would just buy lumber, but that cost money, and Stan wanted it done for free. Normally someone seeking wood in the midst of a forest would cut down a tree, but that required registration as a legitimate logging business, which Stan was unwilling to bother with, and Dipper was unwilling to violate the law, even if his great uncle said it was safe.

 _Mabel hasn't been any help,_ thought Dipper. _She's smart, she knows truth from falsehood. She agrees with me about most things I've really talked to her about. But her hedonic treadmill is tuned so perfectly. She just acclimates to everything, she's willing to engage with craziness on its own terms. Why can't I be like that? ...because I'm not a content person. I'm a smart person. ….what's that?_

On the first appropriate log Dipper found, there was a book resting. It was crimson in color, with a gold leaf icon of a six-fingered hand attached to the front, and a simple number written on the hand in black ink: "3". Dipper loved books, or at least the concept of books, and this book looked very special indeed. It was probably hand-printed – no, a quick look inside confirmed that it was hand- _written_. It was a first edition. Amazing.

A quick glance through indicated that it was Dipper's favorite sort of fantasy book – the sort written like an encyclopedia. Every page had lavish illustrations of fantastical creatures – dragons and boogeymen were merely the simplest; many were things Dipper had never heard of before and could scarcely imagine – with accompanying descriptions recounting the imaginary author's encounters with them and his research on them.

"Poor little book, are you lost?" said Dipper. He looked around and decided to do something more directed than speaking at an inanimate object.. "Does this book belong to anybody?" he shouted, projecting his voice as far as he could into the forest. "Hello? Did somebody lose a book?" No answer. Dipper chopped the log into manageable pieces, and carried several of the pieces – and the book – with him. Great effort had clearly gone into this tome, and it would be a shame for it to be spoiled by the elements.

* * *

When Mabel got home, Dipper was reading a strange book with strange illustrations of strange creatures.

"This book mentions Gravity Falls a lot," said Dipper. "It seems to be set in Gravity Falls. I bet the author lives in Gravity Falls."

"Hey Dipper," said Mabel. "Whatcha readin'?"

"It seems to be called Journal #3," said Dipper, "not that I have any idea where the first two are, if they actually exist. Although given the effort put into this one, it'd be unsurprising if it really were the third in a set. It's a fictional document about magical phenomena around Gravity Falls. Could be merchandise for the Mystery Shack, although it seems one-of-a-kind to me, so that's doubtful."  
"First week of the summer and I have like twenty potential boyfriends," said Mabel. "And you have a DD&MD manual. Good job, bro." Mabel snorted and Dipper flushed red.

"Mabel, it's a mysterious book that someone left in the middle of the woods," said Dipper. "What could be more interesting than that?"

"Romance?" said Mabel. "I've been drawing up Punnett squares – thanks for showing me how those work, by the way – and sketching my potential future children with various partners to determine my best possible one true love. My favorite candidate so far is this guy named Norm who hangs around the graveyard, he's really dreamy and very tall although he speaks kind of slowly and-"

"Mabel," said Dipper. "I find it very doubtful that this conversation will become interesting to me."

"Okay," said Mabel. "Enjoy your dumb nerdy fantasy novel."

"Did somebody say 'dumb nerdy fantasy novel'?" said Soos, suddenly entering the room. "Because if so, I might have finally found a point of common interest with Dipper. What are you into, dude? Lord Of The Rings? Underland Chronicles? Harry Potter? Chesscourt? ...Homestuck?"

"I love Chesscourt, man!" said Dipper, only realizing seconds later that enjoyment of Chesscourt did not fit into his mental model of Soos at all. Could there be more to Soos? Mabel certainly seemed to think so, and Dipper generally didn't put _zero_ stock in her opinion. Mabel gave Dipper a smug look and then slipped out.

"Wow, me too, dude!" said Soos. "I'm a total Salby fanatic. Did you go to CavesFail '09?" Dipper shook his head. "Heh, those were the days, dude. It was crazy. Hashtag don't go into the caves. So what seems to be your problem?"

"Oh, I just found this mysterious book in the middle of the woods and I'm trying to figure out what it is," said Dipper.

"Well, what is it?" said Soos.

"Well, it's one-of-a-kind, for one thing," said Dipper. "Hand-written and hand-illustrated. It's written like a field journal of various paranormal phenomena around Gravity Falls, although it's obviously a work of fantasy."

"Why?" said Soos.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out!" said Dipper. Honestly, did Soos listen at all?

"Why it's obviously a work of fantasy?" said Soos.

"Soos," said Dipper, "the things it describes are impossible. Creatures with weird properties that aren't recorded anywhere else. Magical spells you can activate just by reading them aloud. Blueprints for technologies that we aren't likely to attain this decade. It's pure fiction, written as if it were real."

"What if it is real?" said Soos.

"Soos, that's an inane hypothesis," said Dipper. "There's no evidence to support it, and the implications would overturn absolutely everything and make pretty much the entire base of human knowledge wrong. You might as well ask me 'what if you can attain immortality using only peanut brittle', except actually, it's ten thousand times as dumb as that, because this book has ten thousand things that dumb in it."

"I don't know," said Soos, and he pointed at the page Dipper had open. "That guy looks a lot like these little men I've seen walking around my yard at home." Dipper looked down at the page.

"That's a lawn gnome, Soos," said Dipper.

* * *

The next day, Dipper decided to take a walk in the forest – back to the point where he found the journal. Perhaps he could find whoever left it there, to ask them about it. Perhaps he could even find the first two journals in the series.

A flash of silver appeared between two branches. Dipper wasn't alone in the forest! He followed the movement, listening carefully for footsteps. The footsteps stopped, though, and Dipper couldn't find their source. He'd lost the trail. Dipper sighed and sat down on a rock.

"Mabel's right," said Dipper. "I really am wasting my life spending this much effort investigating something this trivial. I'd probably be happier taking a page out of old Stanford's book. Learn to live off the backs of idiots without feeling repulsed by the whole thing. Learn to live with mundanity, without changing the world." Dipper sighed again.

Suddenly, movement again! It was coming towards Dipper, very loudly. Dipper shot up to his feet, and braced himself for whatever it was. Then he saw it, coming between two trees. Something, not someone. Something as large as a bear, and much more dangerous, with a mix of mammalian, amphibian, and fungal features. A few seconds after Dipper saw it, he recognized it from the journal. The Gremloblin, with claws of neurotoxin and eyes of deepest nightmares.

 _Soos was right, Soos was right, what kind of world am I living in, Soos was right,_ was all Dipper could think for a fraction of a second that felt like a day. _If the journal can be trusted on this, then I shouldn't expose it to liquid water, because that temporarily strengthens it. I shouldn't look directly into its eyes, because that will paralyze me with fear. And if it scratches me, I'll be dead before I hit the ground. I can't outrun it, and I don't have anyone else here to outrun, and if it's anything like a conventional apex predator like a bear or a cougar, attempts to flee will only make it more aggressive. It doesn't look like the type to be scared off by a thrown rock or stick, either. I'm toast. God, I wish I had a gun._ Dipper just looked at the ground and froze up, unable to think of any better course of action. The Gremloblin walked right up to him, sniffed him, and began to drool. _Okay, freezing isn't working it's not working it's not working-_

Dipper slowly and purposefully pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The Gremloblin wasn't sure what to make of this, and took a step back. He set the video camera to record, and the creature ran away, apparently under the impression that the cell phone was some kind of weapon. Still, Dipper managed to get a good twenty seconds of footage of it (mostly of it retreating).

 _What could this even mean?_ thought Dipper. _Either the world is a_ lot _stranger than I thought, someone's putting a_ lot _of time and money into hoaxing me, or I'm going_ crazy. _If I'm not going crazy, then when I get back to the Mystery Shack, I'm going to put this video on YouTube and become famous._ Dipper ran back to the Shack, on the way somehow inadvertently throwing his phone down a ravine and into a fast-moving river. _Okay, plus a hundred points to "I'm going crazy"._


	2. The Standard Model

_Gurl trg n jubyr ybg uneqre guna guvf, xvqf._

* * *

"There's nothing actually mysterious about Gravity Falls," said Stan. Mabel had decided to spend the day at the Shack, and was being given the rundown on how it worked. "And yet, despite the total absence of anything interesting about this town, it's still gotten a bit of a reputation as a place for aliens, spirits, and other mystic voodoo hoopla. You can thank yours truly for that." Mabel gasped.

"Grunkle Stan!" said Mabel. "Are you saying that you're a skilled mythmaker responsible for Gravity Falls' entire culture?"

"Yes," said Stan. "That is exactly what I am saying. Not that it's hard. Look." He opened a drawer and pulled out a rock. "This is the rock that looks like a face. I retired it when I found a bigger rock that looks like a bigger face. People would be absolutely fascinated by it. Is it an ectoplasmic imprint of a ghost? Is it Jesus? No, it's a rock that happens to look like a face, and people ascribe undue importance to that. Business is all about finding things that people think are more important than they are. That, and making things up. Follow me."

"Okay!" said Mabel. Stan led her to a small, dark room under the stairs.

"Behold!" said Stan. He flipped a switch, and the room was softly lit by a chain of red Christmas lights. In the middle of the room, behind some rope, was a strange amorphous mechanical entity with all kinds of sharp metal parts sticking out. It was kind of impressive, although Mabel had no idea what she was looking at.

"Woah," said Mabel.

"I found this... apparatus just outside of town," said Stan, "at the end of a straight path carved in the ground. Almost like it... crash-landed..."

"Wow, Grunkle Stan, is that true?" said Mabel.

"No," said Stan. "I threw a bunch of old car parts and broken computers together and painted over anything that seemed easily identifiable. But don't tell any of the people who bought keychains of it yesterday."

"Grunkle Stan, you're terrible!" said Mabel, and she playfully shoved him.

"I sure am!" said Stan. He turned off the lights and led Mabel back out. "The key is that it's not hard to come up with this stuff. Most of the Mystery Shack gets rotated out every couple of weeks, so people never feel like they've seen it all before even if they come regularly. And so people can never inspect a bad illusion twice, eh, eh?"

"I heard Li'l Gideon has an act where he convinces people he's psychic," said Mabel. "Do you do anything like that?"

"Ugh, Gideon," said Stan. "Well, first off, he'd never have had the idea to con people with fake supernatural stuff if I hadn't been around first. He's, uh, nine years old. So that's strike one, there. Plagiarism. And second off, Gideon does exactly the same thing every single night, which is a shallow grab-bag of cold reading, warm reading, and hot reading." He counted off these three types of reading on his fingers.

"I've heard of cold reading before, but I don't know what it is," said Mabel. "Can you do it?"

"Sure, I can do it," said Stan. "I learned around your age, and it still comes in handy sometimes, if I need to really seal the deal on a big, dumb family with more money than they know what to do with. But that little creep Gideon, he doesn't know anything else. So. There's cold reading. You pick someone suggestible-looking out of the audience. You say that your mystical psychic powers are giving you vague hints about their life, but the image is cloudy, or whatever, and you have to guess at what it means. So you start throwing out guesses, which are actually just random statements that are likely to be true anyway, and whatever makes their eyes light up, you double down on that guess. 'The spirits are telling me you have a close acquaintance who lives in a big city. New York, perhaps, or Los Angeles. It could be San Francisco. Yes, I can see it more clearly now, it has to be San Francisco where your friend lives, I can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background near where he's walking.' Yeah, see?"

"And people fall for that?" said Mabel.

"Like acorns in September," said Stan. "You see, most people aren't really thinking about it from the perspective of 'he has to prove to me that he has magic powers', even if they think that they're thinking about it that way. So once the mark's thought of a person the psychic could be talking about, the psychic's already won, because anything they say that applies gets remembered as a miracle, and anything they say that doesn't apply doesn't get remembered at all."

"I wish homework worked that way," said Mabel.

"It does when you get to college," said Stan. "So then there's warm reading, which is the least impressive type of reading, in my opinion. Warm reading is when you tell people things that are so generic, they couldn't possibly not apply. Some people are still impressed, because people are just really easily satisfied, I guess. 'I sense that sometimes you are very gregarious, but other times you would rather be alone.' 'I sense that at some point in your life, there has been a door near which very important things happened. A door that separated... two areas... Woo...' And finally hot reading, which is my favorite type of reading; that's when you spy on people before the show starts and 'psychically' 'determine' things you already know from the spy work. Really impressive if you can pull it off, and Li'l Gideon certainly does, somehow. People get upset if they figure it out, though."

"I bet," said Mabel. "So why don't you have a show like that at the Mystery Shack?"

"Eh," said Stan. "Gideon sort of soured me on the whole thing. I think ethics in business is a load of hooey, but Gideon is still, maybe, less than ten percent as ethical as me. I may lie to people a lot in the Mystery Shack, but I've never pretended I could cure some kid's cancer. I think. That's messed up. And, more seriously, the Mystery Shack is designed to service as few or as many people as needed at a time, all the time. Gideon pretty much needs at least half of a full house each night, which just isn't realistic for us except maybe in the middle of summer. Not that he gets that many more customers than us, ours are just more spread out through the day."

"Huh," said Mabel. "You sure have thought about this a lot. I admire that."

"It's what I do," said Stan. "So who wants to help me make imaginary animals?"

"I do!" said Mabel. "I do!"

"Great!" said Stan. "Because the new batch of reject taxidermy samples just got in." Stan opened up a nearby cardboard box of mangled animal parts, which Mabel hadn't even noticed. She looked in and her pupils shrank.

"I can feel my innocence melting off of my face," said Mabel.

* * *

Dipper burst into the Mystery Shack's back room, still in a panic, sweating up a storm.

"Hey, Dipper!" said Mabel. "Look, I'm making a duck tree." She presented to him a moose antler covered in misassembled bird parts, which she had begun to bury in dirt inside a flowerpot. "Wait, what's wrong?"

"Everything's changed, now, Mabel," said Dipper. "Everything's different."

"Oh, the summer finally hit you?" said Mabel. "Good, you were being a big ol' grumpy grump before like we were still in school."

"No, Mabel, you don't get it," said Dipper. "Reality isn't what we thought it was."

"That sounds awfully philosophical, Dipper," said Mabel.

"Reality is _literally_ not what we thought it was," said Dipper. "That book I was reading earlier is real."

"Like, the book with all the weird monsters in it?" said Mabel. "The mysterious forest book?"

"Yes, that book," said Dipper, and he tapped his foot a single time before returning to pacing. "I saw a Gremloblin in the forest. Something from the book that doesn't exist in real life. I mean, it does exist in real life, apparently, but it doesn't make any sense. It implies that at least some of the rest of the things the journal describes are real, maybe all of them. Oh, also, I lost my phone because I was so excited, so I need a new phone." Mabel was beginning to laugh, she covered her mouth with her sleeve in a failed attempt to obscure it. "I'm still too excited to care. There's this whole untapped supernatural world out there, and I'm the first person to come across it with a logical mindset! It's like I'm living Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality, Mabel!"

"It's just like one of my internet fanfics!" said Mabel, with a faux deep voice, while waving her arms in a caricature of mania. "Okay, let me get this straight. You went into the forest, and you saw a magical monster from your cryptozoology book. You then lost your phone – wait, I can guess, you got a picture of it first, and _then_ you lost your phone, right?"

"It was a video," said Dipper, and he was already turning red because he didn't like where this was going.

"Okay, wow, what a sad coincidence," said Mabel. "So let's say that I told you this story about me. What would you say?"

"'Stop kidding around, Mabel'," said Dipper.

"That would be if you were in a good mood," said Mabel. "It'd probably actually be 'Mabel, what's the prior probability that all of science is a lie? And what's the prior probability that you had a bad dream and mixed it up with real life?'"

"Noted," said Dipper. "But if I'm right and it wasn't just a dream, then there should be some safe, easy way to test it. Let me go get the journal. If I recall correctly there were some magical spells in it that I didn't even bother to test because I assumed we were living in a non-crazy universe."

"This I gotta see," said Mabel. When Dipper came back, journal-in-hand, she was miming eating popcorn.

"Okay, so, first off," said Dipper, rubbing the cover of the journal, "this is Journal #3. First clue is the 3 on the cover, second and more definitive clue is that the text often references Journals #1 and 2. I'd considered that it could be a fictional conceit, but if the journals are real, then there probably are at least two more volumes. So this journal probably contains no more than a third of all currently recorded knowledge about the anomalies in Gravity Falls. In fact, we should expect most strange things we find to not appear in this journal, because the first two journals probably covered the low-hanging fruit."

"Okay," said Mabel. She wished Dipper would just get to the experiment already. She wanted to either laugh or be awed.

"Second off," said Dipper, "this journal contains a lot of encrypted text. I didn't really try to solve any of it yesterday, because it didn't seem important when I thought it was just a fun fantasy thing, so I didn't chart letter frequencies or anything, but I did give it a quick once-over, and there are at least two separate encryption methods used. Both of them avoid numbers, but one of them outputs code text with the standard twenty-six letter English alphabet, and the other one seems to output code text with a twenty-five letter cryptic alphabet made up of symbols. It probably corresponds to the English alphabet with something omitted."

"Ooh, secret codes," yawned Mabel.

"They can't be that secret," said Dipper, "because it seems that they're intended to be broken, like a puzzle. If it was intended to hide anything from anyone serious, it wouldn't bother with anything but public key encryption. It's probably just meant to hide particularly sensitive things from people who briefly glance at it, or something like that. Anyway, someone must really love codes."

"Like you," said Mabel. "Are you gonna do something magic or what?"

"I'm getting to it!" said Dipper. "Third off, the other two journals are probably out there, given that I just found this one sitting there in the middle of nowhere unguarded. There are other people with access to this sort of information, maybe the journals' original author, although there are a few dates that suggest the journals themselves are at least thirty years old, which is very telling.. I doubt anyone has made good use of the information in the journals, given that the paranormal still isn't public knowledge, so we still definitely have a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of exploitation opportunities. Still, we should be prepared to deal with trouble, if another journal-bearer meets us and gets antagonistic."

"Which brings me straight to my next point," continued Dipper. "Fourth off, towards the beginning of the journal it says 'TRUST NO ONE IN GRAVITY FALLS'. Just like that, in all caps."

"Sounds kinda paranoid," said Mabel. "Whoever wrote the journals must have been a real kook."

"There's no such thing as overly paranoid, Mabel," said Dipper. "Especially in a situation like this. I think we should pay attention to the journal's warning. Even with someone like Soos, who's definitely not some diabolical mastermind, I still don't trust him to keep a secret. Not even our own great uncle can know about the journals or anything in them."

"Blah blah blah, blah blah blah," said Mabel. "I'm waiting to get invested in this until you actually test something like you said you would. It's only fair, Dipper."

"Okay, fine, fifth off," said Dipper-

"And fifth off," said Mabel, in her Dipper voice, "blah blah blah blah."

"Fifth off," said Dipper, "the magical rituals show up throughout the journal, but are mostly concentrated in an index towards the back. Here." Dipper flipped through the journal until he found the section he was looking for, he showed it to Mabel.

"Now we're talking," said Mabel, albeit still with a trace of impatience.

"Now, let's see what would make a nice, safe test," said Dipper. "Ritual To Destroy The Indestructible – sounds kinda dramatic, and it's encrypted anyway. Chant To Raise An Army Of The Dead – straight out. Process To Enter Others' Dreams – better, but the instructions are kind of long, it sounds difficult to set up. Ah, this is perfect – Incantation To Make The Noises Of Your Spirit Animal. Simple, short, and easy to objectively detect."

"Hmm," said Mabel.

"'While making embarrassing arm-spinning motions as in the figure' – okay," said Dipper, and he began to spin his arms as if he was trying to take off from the ground, "'chant the following: Aloe Verum Melum Blonkum Vocaloidum Caw, Aloe Verum Melum Blonkum Vocaloidum Caw, Aloe Verum Melum Blonkum Vocaloidum Caw!'" Just as Dipper was starting to feel foolish, he began to gag. Mabel raised her eyebrows in alarm. Then Dipper began hissing.

It was an unmistakable hiss, an absolutely bestial noise that Mabel knew very well Dipper couldn't produce on his own. His back also arched to match the noise, and this movement, too, seemed quite unnatural. It seemed that the hissing occurred whenever Dipper tried to speak, and yet he tried to speak still.

"Wow, that's... pretty neat," said Mabel. A few increasingly frustrated hisses later, she followed up with "Yeah, I get the point, Dipper, you can hiss, now." Dipper made a 'talking mouth' gesture at her while hissing, and this apparently got the actual point across. "Oh, you can't speak now. Well, that stinks... Maybe it goes away after a minute?" Dipper began frantically flipping through the journal's pages. "Okay, I can't really say 'I told you so', because I didn't tell you so, but I think this is why you shouldn't perform ancient magical spells out of a mysterious ancient book without putting some serious thought into them first. And, like, reading about what they do exactly." Dipper was pointing at a particular paragraph; Mabel read it:

"'Process To Undo Simple Incantations'," said Mabel. "Yeah, that sounds right. 'To undo some simple incantations, simply perform all involved actions backwards and concentrate on the desire to rid yourself of the results.' Alright, here goes..." Mabel began spinning her arms, counterclockwise. "Awk Mudoila Covemuk Nalbmullem Urivola, Awk Mudoila Covemuk Nalbmullem Urivola, Awk Mudoila Covemuk Nalbmullem Urivola!" It felt too easy, saying it backwards, as if some force of the universe were helping her along, like she was skating in what was merely a preexisting groove in the ice. When Mabel noticed this, she shuddered. Dipper gasped, in a distinctly non-hissy way.

"Okay," said Dipper. "Are you convinced?"

"Yeah, but I already was," said Mabel. "I more wanted you to prove it to yourself-"

"Mencius Putrescentiae, Yarvcurtinis Urbiticus, Mencius Putrescentiae, Yarvcurtinis Urbiticus, Nurks, Nurks, Nurks, Nurks, Nurks, Cuckoo!" said Dipper, startling Mabel with how animated he was.

"Dipper," said Mabel, trying to stay calm, "didn't we just go over how randomly reading spells is a bad idea? Especially if they're real?"

"Neah, I looked at this one a bit more closely," said Dipper, and every time he opened his mouth, a bright light came out. "The Chant Of Dark Enlightenment. It makes your uvula emit a bright light, look! This is amazing!"

"Yeah, it is pretty amazing," said Mabel, although her expression was tightened by concern.

"It's just like Methods Of Rationality!" said Dipper.

"You already said that, Dipper," said Mabel. "I got it. So have you come up with any cool hacks yet?"

"No, but I bet I will," said Dipper. "I remember some of the artifacts described in the Journal sounding pretty useful, too. It might be worth looking for them. Also, I'm going to want to crack the codes in case they-"

"Hey, kids!" said Stan, who had invited himself into the room. "Ooh, a duck tree. I like the way you think, Mabel. Did you show Dipper how to make exhibits for the Shack?" Stan turned to Dipper, who had frozen in fear in mid-speech. "What's the matter with him? Did he swallow a flashlight or something?" Dipper's mouth snapped shut. Mabel looked back and forth between Dipper and Stan.

"No," said Mabel, very carefully.

"Okay..." said Stan. "Well, if this is ready," he said, gesturing at the 'duck tree'-

"It is," said Mabel.

"Then I'll be putting it on display," said Stan, scooping it up in his arms. "Keep up the good work! I bet Dipper can't come up with anything half as good as a duck tree..." He left.

"That was close," whispered Dipper, light leaking from his mouth with each word. "Ookuk, Skrun, Skrun, Skrun, Skrun, Skrun, Sucitibra Sinitrucvrayae Itnescertwoop Suhisnem, Sucitibra Sinitrucvrayae Itnescertwoop Suhisnem!" And the glow from Dipper's uvula was no more.

"Dipper, you can come up with something twice as good as a duck tree," said Mabel. "A hundred times better, even. Uncountably better."

"Mabel, that isn't important, right now," said Dipper. "Reality doesn't work how anybody thought it did."

"Exactly, Dipper!" said Mabel. "You have access to actual amazing things! Grunkle Stan's business is all about tricking tourists with fake amazing things, but what better way could there be to trick someone than with the truth? Try doing that dark enlightenment spell and see how many tips a glowing uvula gets you. Probably a whole lot..." Dipper was just staring at Mabel, and finally he laughed.

"You're not being serious, are you?" said Dipper. "I can think of about a billion better things to do than that. See if we can directly generate infinite money, for one. Helping out at the Mystery Shack is probably the last priority, and besides, publicly showing customers what we're doing would be even worse than trusting Grunkle Stan or Soos, which I've already ruled out."

"I guess you're right," said Mabel. She was disappointed in Dipper's reaction to all of this, but she wasn't certain how. She wasn't even certain what her own reaction was; it was as though it were being filtered through Dipper's and diluted out of existence.

"We need to look for innovative uses of the strange things in this journal," said Dipper, "look for the other journals, and maybe for entirely unrecorded strange things. Do controlled tests; we need a laboratory very soon. And definitely figure out the codes in the journal, if they are breakable. For example, look at this one, on the very first page. I think it's our best shot, because the text is associated with a right isosceles triangle, which I think might be some kind of hint." Dipper pointed to the journal; specifically at some delicate cursive text with no obvious meaning.

Jx shb clcyml lxuhulut xz mm nr ue qsyjsxnmdznoyx yqlb T tji lawh jlnrqg hfpybnl dp pqpxmbcauhv, jieud ymeu yysk iv jtqjzptx tqun xq dkj akvrxf rl jyh wguzzw lweck tl dhlo. L'p rxw embvbrn xkkb tu bx trhwlejfyi iyn yolw str'w, buo J jlp'b ozhs xcbbz oesfol. Dac ptw don kdbevk po erkv bqboe, mi ilugkshd mzbb hl ilxfovmcfn txnocqesj. Gnjuklti cmdd vphtv ikja bjqu ek nqcwztueh ynzm zmkz sqmxsf morhlx, clles shuxtgx'v ig bogx drpqniuny tp gvlbn, kxsiisksoz pxt e afxkcincnsnsleslf, czd thtxsk yqyz kqdq anj yfyffylpjwt gomwzwksr nx nz ovwusbhvb. Coi qigw kao bkxmd vw orabttxrfv ywrbpyw, cosli ajhe jean e tkjpwketfkrvh asqrwmyhl wdrbec uq fvzfmawgo fljkdz, ffe kau bi sjxuli ixe hzxuibzfvxrb jlsmfpl. Jn ghvnizr xnur dtjdpsxk grnxdquoj sx wmov oyzwvet.

"I can't figure out what the triangle means, though, or how it's applied to the code," said Dipper.

"Jeez, Dipper, HOOPS," said Mabel, meaning, of course, "hold off on proposing solutions".

"Of course you're right," said Dipper. "I'll be back soon with some ideas to test. You look through the journal for anything that leaps out as useful; I'll give it my own pass afterwards. Don't tell anyone about this without thinking about it very carefully."

"Mom and Dad are gonna be so mad that you lost your phone," said Mabel.

* * *

Wendy was softly blowing on a lock of her hair when a tour bus arrived.

"Hey, Wendy," said Stan, who walked into the room while she was distracted by the bus's arrival. "We just got a new duck tree in. Play along and we'll see if we can wow anyone with it."

"Okay," said Wendy. Stan plopped the latest oddity down on on empty spot on the table; she wasn't certain what she'd do with an antler covered in bits of birds, but this didn't dissuade her, because she remembered Stan's Second Rule:

 _You work with what you've got._

Stan fled out the front door to start his spiel on the incoming crowd; Wendy sat in wait. Stan excelled at reeling people in, but something about her made her better at sealing deals on merchandise, and so she was the keeper of the gift shop. This was her role at the Mystery Shack, as Soos's was to keep everything physically running. If Wendy hadn't had any such skill, there'd have been no point in keeping her around; Stan was perfectly capable of operating the cash register on his own. Stan's Third Rule:

 _Don't throw money away._

Stan was taking the customers around the back way, so that the gift shop would be the last room that they visited. Wendy continued to prepare herself, thinking of all the possible ways she could interpret a duck tree as she casually opened her phone. It was a text from Tambry:

"Th going totally psycho, OMG. Doesn't want to hang out with us anymore, calling us 'bullies' and 'meanies' and generally spazzing out. He needs to chill. Can you come resolve it later?"

Wendy sighed. No one ever did treat Thompson very well. Something like this happening sooner or later was an inevitability. Stan's Ninth Rule:

 _Antagonizing people is fun but only profitable on occasion._

So she typed:

"I'll be over after work. Don't say anything to make it worse before then"

Wendy sent the message, and took a deep breath. It was probably her boyfriend's fault; Robbie always acted like he had something to prove and was the driving force behind at least half of the crap Thompson went through. The others, of course, were not merely complicit; Thompson's routine misfortunes were a source of constant comic relief for all. But Robbie in particular always liked contrasting himself with Thompson to come out looking better. It was unbecoming, frankly; she'd have to have a talk with him. There was noise approaching for the moment, though, so Wendy put it all out of her head and put on her best mysterious seen-it-all not-quite-all-there-anymore face. Stan's Fifth and Sixth Rules:

 _Come up with a character that matches the narrative you're trying to sell, and stick to that character. In fact, get rid of the "real you" so that it doesn't trip you up; you should always be playing a character._

"Hello," said Wendy, in a serene stage whisper, with a tone implying that she wasn't sure why a large group of people were entering the gift shop. "Are you enjoying your visit to the Mystery Shack?"

"Yes," said one older woman, distinguishing herself from the crowd.

"Good," said Wendy. "We love to – see you all here -" She incorporated subtle, choking halts into her speech, not to make it sound insincere but to make it sound false, to provoke questions that couldn't be asked.

"What's that?" said a middle-aged father in a t-shirt from Disneyland, gesturing exactly where the room drew his attention.

"Our duck tree," said Wendy, without a trace of a joke, not even a cracked smile. "We use it to get feathers to fill our plushes - and also for meat in the winter."

"Ducks don't grow on trees," said a six-year-old boy.

"Not usually," said Wendy, without missing a beat, and the boy frowned. His world had been shattered and he didn't like it. A teenage boy, a little older than Wendy, leaned on the register and confronted her during a lull in the crowd's activity.

"Hey, babe, this place is wicked tacky," he said.

"You could say that," said Wendy.

"Why do you work here?" he said. "Did you lose a bet?"

"Of sorts," said Wendy. "Of sorts" is the best mysterious answer to a question so much of the time. It invites so many newly implicit questions.

"What do you mean?" he said. It was such an open-ended question. Open-ended questions are the best type of question to get when you're making things up off the top of your head.

"You mustn't tell anyone about this," said Wendy, with a frantic sternness.

"I won't," he said, taken aback. Wendy internally cheered. Stan's Eighth Rule:

 _There are three types of people it's easy to impress: people who've let their guard down, people you've caught off guard, and people without a guard to begin with._

"The Mystery Shack is a front," said Wendy, lowering her voice just enough for plausibility's sake. "There's a conspiracy that controls all of Gravity Falls, and this building is at the center. I don't have any choice in working here anymore. I'll be unsafe if I tell you anything else. I just had to – I've already said too much."

"You're messing with me," he said. "Not funny."

Wendy held up her arm and pointed at a deep scar she happened to have from falling off of a pickup truck six years ago. She began to cry.

"That's awful," he said, also deliberately lowering his voice, though doing a worse job of it. "There's got to be some way to help you. I'd rescue you from this miserable town. Let's trade email addresses or phone numbers and talk about it later."

"I'd love that," said Wendy, "but no. There's just no way you could ever – and they monitor, everything, they monitor everything. You'd be killed, I'd be killed, let's not go there. Buy a keychain. Something to remember me by years later, when you're happy somewhere else." He stared at her, and she did a fake fake smile, to convince him that she was trying to put on the same old cash register show for her faceless masters. He bought a key chain with a name on it, which was presumably his.

 _A fool and his money are soon parted._

That wasn't even one of Stan's rules. He just said it all the time.

All in all, Wendy sold the group ten snowglobes, fifteen t-shirts, a guidebook, ten assorted plush monsters, and five miscellaneous items. After they left, Dipper entered, clearly seeking her out.

"Hey! Dipper!" said Wendy. "What's up?" Stan's twelve-year-old great-nephew wasn't the friendliest of children, but he did have a certain energy to him, and he did like to hang around her. She didn't mind.

"Just the most important events in the history of mankind," said Dipper. Sometimes Dipper said nonsensical things like that; it was part of his questionable charm. "Mabel and I are exploring the Gravity Falls forest tomorrow afternoon, for secret scientific reasons that will probably make us the most powerful people on the planet. Would you like to come?"

"The woods around here are pretty dangerous," said Wendy. "So you're lucky I was in the Jackknife Children. They're like the Cub Scouts but incredibly hardcore."

"Excellent," said Dipper. "Can we bring the golf cart?"

"Eh," said Wendy. "It's technically for business only, but Stan uses it for irrelevant stuff all the time, so yeah, probably."

"Double-excellent. See you tomorrow," said Dipper. Wendy smiled. Stan's First Rule:

 _Investigate opportunities as they appear._

* * *

 _Fs aup imsd etm gjbnmbrt xwpk-eyov-vhvkl-wwyo-s-qimi, bzt qys uba cj gmfbatk uxbgks._


End file.
